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Date:      Fri, 20 Feb 2015 16:37:12 -0600
From:      Alan Cox <alc@rice.edu>
To:        John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
Cc:        Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>, "K. Macy" <kmacy@freebsd.org>, Alan Cox <alc@freebsd.org>, John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com>, Konstantin Belousov <kib@freebsd.org>, "freebsd-arch@freebsd.org" <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: getting NUMA into the tree (userland most interesting for me)
Message-ID:  <968C1AD7-D806-4E69-87E4-AB88A4C5AA70@rice.edu>
In-Reply-To: <2069208.rjIe3PXOHb@ralph.baldwin.cx>
References:  <20150219041012.GJ1953@funkthat.com> <CAJ-Vmok4peyq95o7%2BT7EkEEVb2ZqU3Y0pd_9kTMyBrxuhvX05w@mail.gmail.com> <CAHM0Q_Po7zkXhsS6N75sbLY1b5GmHmKbBE7T4z6dQg3CGWAuYw@mail.gmail.com> <2069208.rjIe3PXOHb@ralph.baldwin.cx>

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On Feb 20, 2015, at 2:14 PM, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Friday, February 20, 2015 12:17:09 AM K. Macy wrote:
>>>>> Yes, I think we have a fair bit to do in the kernel before we are =
in a
>>>>> position to export anything truly useful to userland =
unfortunately.  The
>>>>> last time I talked with Jeff about projects/numa (after the first =
draft
>>>>> of the wiki page) I came away with the impression that there might =
be
>>>>> some things we can pull out of that branch, but that it isn't =
suitable
>>>>> for merging upstream directly.  Jeff noted that he and Alan had =
gone
>>>>> through several iterations of this already (I believe at least 3
>>>>> completely different policy designs) all of which had their own =
issues.
>>>>>=20
>>>>> Outside of the VM I think that we can keep the APIs somewhat =
stable by
>>>>> having this opaque policy cookie to pass around that we can =
redefine
>>>>> the guts of later.  However, various parts of the VM all have to =
handle
>>>>> whatever the policy defines, and while the vm_phys bits and
>>>>> contigmalloc() might be kind of obvious to implement, higher level =
VM
>>>>> layers like kmem() and malloc() are more complicated.  One thing =
that
>>>>> is in projects/numa is changes for UMA that we can hopefully reuse =
much
>>>>> of, but I don't recall how much (if any) of kmem/malloc is in =
there.=20
>>>>> Also, while vm_phys is one of the first things to do, I know that =
Alan
>>>>> and Jeff have pending patches to remove the cache queue (since it =
is
>>>>> far less useful than it seems) which simplify vm_phys making it =
easier
>>>>> to implement NUMA policies there, so I'm hoping we can get that in
>>>>> sooner before having to start tearing up the VM too much.  This is =
why
>>>>> the stuff I currently have is targeted non-VM bits like interrupts =
as
>>>>> getting that correct is lower-hanging fruit that might provide =
some
>>>>> gains regardless.  Even once vm_phys is done I think the first =
thing to
>>>>> tackle next is contigmalloc to facilitate static bus_dma =
allocations
>>>>> (descriptor rings and such) being local to a device.
>>>>=20
>>>> Contigmalloc improvements and cache queue removal are in the
>>>> phabricator queue now. They are also prerequisites for per-cpu free
>>>> page caches which are a huge scalability improvement for some
>>>> workloads such as Netflix's.
>>>>=20
>>>> There is still a fair amount of scalability work  (including =
Jeffr's
>>>> per-domain pagedaemon work) that really needs to happens before we =
can
>>>> seriously think about a general user-level NUMA interface.
>>>=20
>>> Is there anything wrong with maybe bringing over the basic low level
>>> allocator changes from projects/numa so the basics are there?
>>=20
>> I think they're probably predicated on the work that is being
>> shepherded in now. Even if not, it would require someone to shepherd
>> it in and the corresponding spare cycles from alc to review / revise =
/
>> repeat - which seem to be in short supply.
>=20
> Can you add entries for these to the wiki page with links to the phab =
reviews? =20
> I know there is an entry for the page cache queue removal already, but =
you=20
> could add one for contigmalloc right next to it.
>=20


Essentially, the =93Remove the =91cache=92 page queue=94 task has a =
number of significant subtasks that aren=92t listed, and the =
contigmalloc() rewrite is the biggest of them.  Specifically, the =
current contigmalloc(M_WAITOK) implementation exploits the existence of =
the =91cache=92 page queue, and to eliminate that dependence requires =
the M_WAITOK case to work very differently.





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